


Lord Help His Poor Soul

by Portrait_of_a_Fool



Category: The Following
Genre: Alcoholism, Graphic Imagery, M/M, Mentions of Violence, Some Explicit Language, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:44:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Portrait_of_a_Fool/pseuds/Portrait_of_a_Fool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Red is the color of blood, rage, hatred, sex, passion and love. Everything comes back to red with Joe in Ryan's mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lord Help His Poor Soul

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains general spoilers for the entirety of S1 and specifically for 1x1 and 1x15.

_“Hell is not a place, it’s a state of mind and body; hell is obsession with a voice, a face, a name…”_

— Susan Kay   
_Phantom_

**Scarlet** tie that Joe is wearing one of the days Ryan watches him hold court in his classroom. His eye is constantly drawn to it where it peers from his vest, a splash of color in an otherwise drab room. He listens while Joe speaks and gets lost in the man’s enthusiasm for the subject of his lecture, growing interested in Lord Byron despite himself. He still thinks the man was about as lackluster of a writer as they get, but the way Joe Carroll talks about his work makes it sound downright lovely and heroic. He makes Byron’s poetry sound like something to be celebrated instead of something to be muddled through in school to then be put away and forgotten.

He leans against the wall and tracks the peep of scarlet from Joe’s tie. It’s almost flirtatious the way the red barely shows. It would be lost if not for the vibrant color of it. Ryan’s thoughts wander around beneath the surface of his interest in the lecture. He thinks of that peering, nearly flirty splash of red like a popsicle-stained tongue lightly pressing between two lips. He has a moment where he almost laughs, asking himself when he up and decided to grow an imagination.

Red is the color most likely to draw attention, Ryan knows that. He thinks Joe probably wore the scarlet tie because he knows it, too. Ryan is wearing a black t-shirt and dark blue jeans; he is nondescript and easy for the eye to pass over. He feels eyes on him all the same and glances up in time to find Joe’s eyes pinned to him. He almost jumps, but manages to only stare dumbly before remembering himself and blinking.

It’s then that Joe smiles at him, a quick flash of teeth that makes his dark eyes light up. Ryan smiles back without being totally aware of it until he notices the way Joe’s eyes have flared even brighter. It is it triumph or simply pleasure at being acknowledged? Ryan has no idea, but he thinks it’s time for him to leave now.

It wasn’t meeting Joe Carroll or consulting with him on the case—on _Joe’s_ case—that Ryan will one day regret more than anything else. No, it will be the day he smiled at Joe in his classroom because that is the day he truly opened a door he still cannot completely close.

Later, he learned that Joe’s scarlet tie was made of silk. He can still remember how it felt running through his fingers as he pulled it from around Joe’s neck. It was another late night of conversation and Scotch. Then the taste of Joe’s skin, the smell of his cologne. Joe’s tie dangling forgotten from his fingers like a popsicle-stained tongue as they moved closer together.

On drunken nights when even the walls stop making sense, Ryan thinks how it’s funny that something as simple as a tie can haunt someone like a ghost.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Crimson** ink in the old fashioned fountain pen that Joe uses to grade papers. Ryan sits in his office one afternoon and watches the ink stream out in bright spools of color. He listens to the scratch of the metal nib across the page and the little _tut_ sound Joe makes when he comes across a bad metaphor.

Joe glances up and laughs before looking back at the paper he’s toiling over. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say most of these students hadn’t completed grade seven, much less graduated high school. This is dreadful.”

He listens to Joe scoff with amused frustration as his pen scrawls across yet another page. He must be annoyed with this particular paper, the writing is furiously fast and he sounds like he’s bearing down on the nib a bit harder than usual. Ryan smiles faintly and waits for him to be done. They have plans for lunch—Ryan won’t call it a _date_ , but that’s what he thinks it is—and he’s been waiting over an hour now.

It was Joe’s idea and even though Ryan thought he should say no, he said yes because that’s what he _wanted_. Usually he’s better at ignoring his wants when they interfere with the bigger picture—like his job or the lives and happiness of others. They have two days to do whatever they fancy without Joe’s wife popping her head in at an inopportune moment. Claire is away doing a guest lecture and she’s taken Joey with her. It’s a lucky—or unlucky—little patch of time they can steal together. The knowledge makes Ryan want to squirm in his seat because he’s looking forward to it and because this is _wrong_.

His mind and moral standing are embroiled in a civil war and Joe is none the wiser. It’s noisy in his head and he really is getting hungry. With a slight twitch of his upper lip, Ryan manages to squash the opposition that is his moral standing. It’s one of his dirty little secrets: he never has had much moral standing to begin with, but he does try so very hard. If he didn’t feed his morals the way he does, primp and pet them, he’s aware he wouldn’t be much better than the people he hunts. There’s a dead junkie’s skeleton in his closet that proves it.

That’s why when Joe picks up another paper and flaps at him like a flag of surrender as he says, “Last one,” Ryan nods and worries more about his stomach than their… _affair_. He smirks to himself when he thinks about how Joe would call “affair” a “tacky word”.

He goes back to watching Joe and notices he’s wearing cufflinks on his pale blue dress shirt today. Even his mode of dress is old fashioned in the smallest—and sometimes not so small—ways. It stands to reason though; Joe is an old fashioned guy, right down to his casual attitude regarding adultery. Like scores of people from a few centuries ago—right on into the swingers parties of the Victorian Era, he seems to take it with not much more than a grain of salt.

Ryan, however, is not old fashioned in any way, shape or _era_. Even with his morals temporarily subdued their ally, guilt, tries to gnaw at him. He has met Joe’s wife and thinks she is a lovely woman; kind and fiercely intelligent. Their son is a sweet kid, smart for his age with all of Claire’s features and none of Joe’s.

_They should not be doing this._

He bites his tongue to keep from saying so out loud. Because he _wants_ to keep feeling Joe’s breath on his cheek and the way he arches under his hands. He _wants_ to keep doing this.

So, when Joe rises from his desk with a sigh, Ryan watches him stretch and clearly pictures the ripple of his abdominal muscles under his shirt and casual Friday cardigan. When Joe walks around his desk and holds out his hand in invitation for Ryan to come along, Ryan swallows once and then takes it. He should feel more ashamed about it than he does.

Later that night, Joe lazily writes something across Ryan’s shoulders in the crimson ink from his fountain pen. He hums while he writes and Ryan lets his mind drift as Joe scrawls words he can’t make out. He doesn’t even know why he’s letting him do this; letting him mark his body in a way that may be impermanent, but still feels like branding. It’s oddly juvenile behavior for Joe, but he seems content with it and Ryan is content to leave him to it while he dozes on the pillow Claire usually sleeps on.

He starts when Joe begins to lick the words away from his back, but relaxes into the soft strokes of his tongue as he erases whatever secret he just wrote.

Ryan never does figure out what Joe was writing or if it was something he was being graded on; like maybe Joe was making notes in the margin of his spine that night. Given Joe’s fixation on him all these years, Ryan can’t help but think he got an A+, regardless.

He at least manages to hate the fact he doesn’t hate knowing that more than he does. He shivers and presses his cheek harder against his flat motel room pillow and tells himself he can’t still feel the phantom touch of Joe’s warm tongue sliding over the backs of his shoulders. He ignores the way his fingers twitch, wanting to reach out and touch the echo of something that, for a little while, he thought was better than this. Better than anything he’s ever known before.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Garnet** is the color of the blood Joe is clothed in when Ryan finds him. There’s so much of it that he looks like he’s been dipped in melted gemstones of the finest, darkest red. What light there is reflects on the smooth surface, turning Joe’s gory figure into a funhouse mirror.

They’re in the burnt out remains of a hospital. There is the bitter smell of old smoke and the stink of stagnant water that gathered in puddles to fester after the firemen had gone. Ryan wonders how many people died in the fire; how many ghosts come out of the shadows when the sun goes down.

Joe is lying on the scorched springs of a gurney and he looks like hell. He is greyish and sick beneath the fine spackling of blood on his face. Most of that melted, oozing garnet color is on his stomach and in puddles on the floor where it has run in thick tributaries across the cracked old tile. He’s holding something wrapped in the ruins of what must’ve been his shirt and that, too, is smear-smudged with blood. Ryan watches him from the doorway of the room and wonders what the hell is going on.

Joe smiles at him and motions for Ryan to come into the room. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he says.

“You’re always waiting for me, Joe,” Ryan says as he walks toward him. He tracks through the blood, but it doesn’t bother him. Blood washes off.

“Am I?” Joe asks. “I thought it was the other way round: You always waiting for me.” He tilts his head in consideration as Ryan draws near enough to see the gaping hole in his stomach and the gleam of the knife where it shines beneath the blood with a different kind of light. “Perhaps we’re waiting for each other then, hmm?”

“What did you do, Joe?” Ryan asks. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. They’ve been having it for ages now, in one form or another and he’s tired of it. He’s so tired.

Joe only smiles at his question, teeth a shocking white against the red on his face. Ryan stares back at him and listens to the _pit-pat-pit_ of blood dripping onto the floor. Whatever Joe is holding makes a soft sound, almost like a sigh and Joe shushes it gently. Ryan wants to back away from him now, finally, after all of this and it’s not even Joe that’s making him so uneasy.

“Look what _we_ did, Ryan,” Joe says at last. It’s not an answer, it’s a correction and Ryan knows it. “ _We_ made this.”

“No,” Ryan says.

“Yes,” Joe says and be damned if he doesn’t sound the littlest bit _hurt_ when he looks at Ryan. “ _Look_.”

He moves the shirt back some and Ryan recoils at what he sees. “No,” he says again, shaking his head.

Joe is cradling a nest of scorpions in his arms. A nest of scorpions that’s feasting on the waxy white body of a giant, blood-smeared maggot.

“Whatever’s wrong with you?” Joe says. “I thought you’d be happy.”

He bounces the thing in his arms and murmurs some kind of comforting nonsense to it. It makes a strange, wet sound when he does and thrashes in his arms. Ryan can hear the rattle-click of the scorpions’ armored bodies when Joe agitates them. He feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Kill it,” Ryan says. He doesn’t think about it, the words just come out of his mouth. “It’s a monster.”

Joe’s eyes are blazing when he looks up at him again, but the corners of his mouth tremble—with amusement or with hurt, Ryan has no idea. “We created this _together_. Part of the responsibility for its birth, its _life_ , is yours. Don’t you ever say such a horrible thing about our—”

“Don’t you dare say it, don’t you dare call that a _child_ ,” Ryan says. “It’s impossible and I will not… I will _not_ …”

Joe frowns at him, all of his anger gone for now; always quick to rise and just as quick to disappear. He hasn’t changed that much. His moods are mercurial and Ryan’s reminded of that even more strongly when Joe smiles at him again. “I think we should name it Claire. What do you say?”

Ryan backs away from Joe, making sure to be careful lest he slip in all of Joe’s melted garnet. The raw meat smell of this much blood is starting to get to him, sticking in the back of his throat so strongly he can almost taste it. Now he knows why Joe cut a hole in his stomach; he had to birth the monstrosity he’s holding somehow. This is not right, not right at all. Men cannot have babies, much less _monsters_. Ryan had no part in this, he’s nothing but a pawn in one of Joe’s delusional fantasies. The man is psychotic, he hides it well a lot of the time, but the fact remains: he is. The scorpion-swarmed monster Joe is holding is _not_ his child. _It is not possible._

The bundle Joe calls a child— _their_ child—is making sick, mewling sounds that sound choked with phlegm. “She’s hungry,” Joe says.

Ryan hopes like hell he doesn’t try to breastfeed the thing.

“In a minute, sweetheart, in a minute,” Joe murmurs to it.

Ryan swallows again as he feels his mouth flood with saliva. He’s going to throw up, he’s can’t help it. When Joe rises from the bed with a pained groan and more blood slips down his stomach to patter onto the floor like fat, lazy raindrops, Ryan almost loses it right there. Joe should’ve bled out by now, but even though he looks sick, he doesn’t look to be near death. Ryan’s thinking that when he bumps into the wall and feels like he just _sticks_ there.

“Christ,” Ryan chokes out as some of the scorpions in the swaddling come swarming up and over Joe’s chest and shoulders. They’re black emperor scorpions, fattened with the meat of the maggot-child and too big to be normal anyway. Ryan wonders if they’re children of his and Joe’s, too and figures they must be.

Even disgusted, he still flinches when one of the scorpions crawls across Joe’s face and he catches the center of its body in his mouth. The crunch of his teeth biting through its exoskeleton is as loud as cracking ice. The thing screams a high-pitched wail as Joe uses his free hand to turn it around tail-first. He begins to devour it alive, the scorpion screaming all the while and Ryan retches at the sight of Joe’s obvious relish.

He doesn’t stop walking and Ryan still can’t move, he’s galvanized by the horrific sideshow playing out in front of him. The scorpion stops screaming right as Joe reaches him and Ryan tries to pull away from him, but cannot.

“It’s your story, too, darling,” Joe tells him. He’s still eating, talking with his mouth full of scorpion and Ryan is tempted to remind him of his manners. That should be a funny thought to have, but Ryan can honestly say he’s never been _less_ amused.

“Kiss me,” Joe whispers. “Please, kiss me.”

Ryan wants to tell him no, he wants to run out of the room and never look back. If he can only get away from this then he’s willing to let Joe go this one time.

Still, he leans in to Joe and does what he asks of him. It’s familiar, so familiar it _aches_ and when Joe opens his mouth to him, he tastes the bitter poison of the scorpion on Joe’s tongue. He can feel its half chewed remains still twitching in Joe’s mouth. He grabs Joe’s face to pull him closer even as he screams and Joe swallows it down like an elixir.

The sound of knocking at his motel room door wakes Ryan from his awful sleep. He comes to with a start, the scream still caught in his throat, the bitter taste of Joe’s poisonous tongue still in his mouth. For the first time in years, Ryan is grateful for the hangover that thunders in his head, it means he is awake. It means he is still alive. It means there are no maggot-children cradled in Joe Carroll’s arms in the burnt out ruins of a hospital somewhere.

He got drunk last night, the drunkest he’s been in a couple of weeks. That’s what he gets, he supposes. He hears Mike calling his name from out in the hallway to go with the knocking and he says, “Yeah! I’m up!”

“Meet you at the car in twenty?” Mike calls through the door. He knows Ryan doesn’t like being bombarded with the presence of others first thing upon waking. He wakes him up every morning though, faithful as an alarm clock now that they know actual alarm clocks (and wake-up calls) actually do very little in the way of waking Ryan Hardy from drunken stupors.

“Fine,” Ryan says.

“Okay,” Mike says and then he’s gone.

Ryan slumps back in bed and scrubs at his face, taking a minute to get his bearings. The dream is an insistent weight on his mind, clips of it playing through his memory over and over. He knows the story very well, he’s been having the dream for years and it never gets easier. He doesn’t assign much stock to dream interpretation, but even he knows this one is easy. This one tells it all. It tells the one truth Ryan will not acknowledge, the one he’s tried to drink under the table for the past nine years. He abhors his subconscious’s inability to simply let shit go. 

With a bitter snort, Ryan clumsily heaves himself out of bed. He’s heading for the shower when his phone begins to ring. He knows it’s Joe, it’s always Joe this early in the morning. Ryan ignores it even though he technically shouldn’t, but Joe always calls back.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Vermilion** highlighted by the brightest gold flares behind Ryan’s closed eyelids as the sun inches across the floor and over his face. He’s been awake for about half an hour, listening to the sound of Joe’s slow, even breathing beside him. The weight and warmth of him pressing into the mattress, leeching into his skin, are already familiar things. It’s only been a short while, but Joe is starting to slot neatly into his life, a curious thing for Ryan. His laughter and the soft leather scent of him fit though, they’re missing pieces of a puzzle Ryan’s never been able to solve. Weeks ago, Ryan realized that Joe could easily sneak into his carefully closed off world and make a home there. Ryan also realized he would let him do it, too.

It’s _terrifying_ because those things he realized are coming true. They’re made even more terrifying because of the nagging suspicions in the back of his mind.

There is something wrong with Joe, something dark and slippery hiding just beneath the calm surface of his eyes. Ryan knows it’s there, but he doesn’t _want_ to know it, not when he also knows he is falling in love with the man. He’s tried to stop it, attempted to derail his flaring emotions, but he cannot. They’ve become a runaway train, interfering with his investigation and with his judgment. Even knowing he is on a collision course isn’t enough to make him call off the affair though. At least not yet, at least not until he can have one… or two… or a hundred… more tastes of the salty sweat that clings to Joe’s skin when they move together.

Sometimes when Joe smiles at him, he looks more like a wolf than a man and it sends a thrill up Ryan’s spine. It answers to some call in his blood that he’s tried to tune out his whole life. Joe’s eyes glitter with predatory intent as he takes Ryan’s forearms in hand and tugs him down on the bed or against his desk to settle between his spread thighs. Ryan likes it, he can taste the sharpness of Joe— _my, what big teeth he has!_ —in his mouth when he kisses him. There is genuine affection in those kisses, but there is also something wild, something a little _unstable_. His gut knows all of these things like it knows there’s more to Joe than meets the eye. Most people, even Claire, don’t see it like Ryan does. Ryan sees it in Joe so easily because he also sees it in himself.

He wants to reach out and touch Joe, run his fingers through his mink-dark hair and feel the slide of it across his fingertips. This was meant to be an afternoon quickie, but they’ve been here for about four hours now and Ryan finds himself wishing they could stay longer. He has a job to do though and Joe has a wife and child who will be expecting him home in time for supper.

His slowly growing desire to _keep_ Joe are making these afternoon get-togethers more stressful than they were ever meant to be. Then again, he never meant to give much of a damn about Joe Carroll either, not this way, not in a, _I want to wake up next to you every morning_ way. It’s disgusting to Ryan’s emotional retardation, he balks at it and shies. In the end it doesn’t stop him from opening his eyes and reaching out to touch Joe’s naked shoulder just to watch the way his eyelashes flutter upward like the tentative beating of moth wings.

“Hello,” Joe says with a sleepy half-smile.

Ryan smiles back and runs his hand down his arm. He can’t help but want to touch, he should stop—he tells himself that a dozen or more times a day, but he never listens, not where this is concerned. He keeps quiet about it this time, too and opts to rip the Band-Aid off this misleading interlude. If he doesn’t, he will get stuck here with Joe and there will be more questions asked than he has answers to give.

“We need to go, it’s getting late,” Ryan says.

Joe nods, but leans in to kiss him anyway and Ryan doesn’t say anything more on the matter for another hour at least. Then he gets up from the bed to go shower away the hours spent with Joe. Joe who sweats and shakes, curses like an undignified illiterate when Ryan does something he finds particularly pleasurable.

He leaves Joe in the shower and once outside, he stands on the sidewalk with his eyes closed for a few seconds to recapture that moment when the world was vermilion touched with gold and Joe was sleeping beside him.

A tap on his shoulder has Ryan’s eyes flying open on the light of a different day that is years removed from the other one. He stares blankly until the shape before him registers as Mike.

“What?” he asks.

“You’ve been standing over here for fifteen minutes,” Mike says. “When you said to give you a minute, I thought you meant, ya know, _a minute_.”

“Sorry,” Ryan says.

He offers no explanation despite the questions in Mike’s eyes. He simply walks around him and goes back to working the scene. He shouldn’t let himself get so caught up in the past when he’s back on the job. He’s supposed to be _hunting_ Joe, not letting his memories drag him through the mud of yesteryear.

It’s easier said than done, however, since Joe never leaves him. He is the phantom pinned to Ryan’s shadow, a persistent tag-along that dogs his heels and his mind. Joe is everywhere that Ryan is. He even follows him down into sleep where he waits with their maggot-child of scorpions—their monster. After so long, he’s been hearing Joe’s voice again, seeing his face and has even touched him. It woke up the only demon of his that was actually asleep, the one that’s bigger and badder than all the rest. The one that whispers a filthy truth in Ryan’s ears, one that has him shaking his head as he strides back into the fray.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Burgundy** wine spilled on the back of Joe’s hand. “Oops,” he mutters as he raises his hand to lick it away. He watches Ryan watching him with a little half smile and Ryan forces himself not to look away. Joe is in good spirits tonight, but Ryan is not. Another girl was found murdered two nights ago and he has no idea where Joe was or what he was doing, but he has a good idea.

His suspicions about Joe have begun to strangle him. Some nights he wants to beat his fists against the wall until the skin splits and smears the paint with the crushed strawberry lurking inside his veins. He still doesn’t want to believe what he knows is true, but he can’t ignore it any longer. It’s not just his gut telling him that anymore. It is his heart, too.

Ryan has crossed the line from _falling_ in love with Joe to being _in_ love with him. Knowing what he knows almost hurts more than he can bear. When Joe nudges him with his elbow to give him his own glass of wine, Ryan tries not to let the pain show on his face.

“We haven’t much time,” Joe says as he kisses the side of Ryan’s neck.

Ryan nods even as he tilts his head to the side to allow Joe easier access. Claire’s out with Joey and they’ll be home soon, but that’s not what he’s thinking about when he says, “I know.”

The heavy weight of those words burn him as he moves away from Joe with his murderer’s hands and soft tongue that licked red words from his skin one night. It seems like it was only an hour ago that happened. An hour and a lifetime ago. Time is collapsing in on him as it runs out and he wants to rage against it, but there’s no use in that. There aren’t enough seconds left for him to waste them with something so melodramatic.

“Perhaps we should forgo anything too… strenuous… this evening and talk instead,” Joe says.

“Sure,” Ryan says.

He wonders why Joe asked him over tonight if there’s no time for them to engage in something more clandestine (that’s a word he thinks Joe would approve of) but he doesn’t question it much. Talking to Joe has been part of his undoing because he _likes_ talking to him. He’s told him more about himself than he’s told anyone in years. He’s thought it a hundred times before: Joe _fits_ and that’s still such a scary realization—in more ways than one.

He follows Joe into the sitting room and thinks that Joe probably asked him over because he likes talking to Ryan, too. He’s told him a good bit about himself, Ryan would even go so far as to say he’s _shared_ parts of himself with him. Oh, but they’ve both kept their ugly secrets, haven’t they? Of course they have. They are such _vile_ secrets, too, secrets that create even as they undo. There’s no sense in such thoughts, not tonight. No, tonight he will lay his suspicions aside one last time for one more conversation with Joe. For a few more minutes of _this_ he will not breathe a word or twitch an eyelash. He will soak it up like a greedy, despicable beast for a little while longer before he has to let it go completely.

Ryan should hate Joe, but he doesn’t. He _can’t_. He’s tried to, he’s tried to twist his anger—and he is _so_ angry with Joe—into a snake-hissing ball of fury that will trample his love into the dust of ages, but it doesn’t work. Even with his heartbeat thudding with lava-red anger-blood in his ears, he keeps… right on… loving Joe.

He stands for a moment beside the sofa where Joe’s sat down and then leans down to kiss him, to taste the burgundy on his lips and tongue. It’s a kiss goodbye and Ryan knows it. The strange look Joe gives him when he pulls back, something sharp in his smile and sad in his eyes, says he knows it, too. In that moment, Ryan thinks they both know what’s going to happen: When the time comes, Ryan will do his duty and they will never have another moment of _this_ again. They will never see one another outside of a courtroom if Joe makes it to trial. Ryan knows Joe will fight him and may kill him if it comes down to it just like he knows Joe is aware that axe swings both ways. Love and death… what strange bedfellows they make even though they’ve known each other since the dawn of mankind.

Ryan goes to sit in his own seat after that quick, painfully soft kiss. When Joe starts telling him about a dreadfully boring faculty dinner party he attended with Claire last week, Ryan laughs in all the right places. He knows that he is going to miss Joe more than anything else in this world.

Two days later, he ends up with a knife in his chest. Talk about fucking poetic.

Ryan listens to Joe muttering his crazy bullshit into his ear and taps his fingers lightly over his heart where the scar and the pacemaker are. These are the conversations that Ryan never tells anyone about. It’s none of their business. Joe tells him nothing important at all, mostly he just talks and Ryan thinks how he’s devolved. He thinks about how Joe is breaking down, all of his (in)famous self-control unraveling like dirty threads to be lost in the ether. If this continues, Joe will be irretrievably insane before too long. It’s strange even to Ryan that he thinks that’s a little bit sad, maybe even tragic.

Joe sounds drunk, his words slurring soft as caramel in Ryan’s ear. Ryan can sympathize, but he’s so pissed at Joe these days he can barely think past his anger. He has to though, there’s nothing else for him _to do_ , which only makes him angrier. He misses the taste of burgundy on Joe’s mouth despite that. He misses the way the light would hit his chest and make it shine when it was slicked with sweat. He misses the way Joe could draw him into conversation about pretty much anything and make it seem interesting. He misses almost everything about Joe. Ryan doesn’t need to think about what that says about him; he already knows. Needless to say, it’s nothing good.

“Shut up and go to bed, Joe,” he says to break them from their trains of thought.

Joe halts in midsentence and snorts in Ryan’s ear. “That’s rude.”

Ryan smirks in the darkness of his motel room. “Yeah, but it got your attention, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know what I ever saw in you,” Joe says.

“I could ask myself the same thing, you know,” Ryan says. He doesn’t want to have this conversation. The past few calls Joe has been making an attempt towards broaching the subject and Ryan is _not_ interested. He’s afraid of what he’ll say if Joe gets too persistent, gains too much leeway.

Something on Joe’s end falls and hits something hard with the almost musical tinkle of glass breaking. Joe mutters a curse under his breath and then, “Sod it.” He clears his throat and then is quiet for a minute or two. Ryan thinks he’s fallen asleep, but then he says, “You can’t pick who you love, Ryan. I believe we both know that.”

“No,” is all Ryan says before hanging up his phone.

He turns it off as an afterthought and again, that’s not something he has any business doing, but Joe tends to call back when he’s got a bug up his ass. If they need him, Mike will come get him, he’s confident in that. Ryan is not about to discuss something like _love_ with Joe, there’s no way in hell that is going to happen. It raises the awakened demon too high in his consciousness and he cannot have that.

~*~*~*~*~*~

**Rosewood** is the color of Joe’s eyes when the light hits them just right. Its always there and gone in a second, but for that tiny moment, his eyes always look more red than brown. They’re nothing but glittering holes in the darkness now as they lay bleeding on the floor with Sarah Fuller between them, but Ryan knows what they really look like. They’re a deep, rich brown touched with the faintest hint of red almost like an afterthought. It’s a trick of the light that makes them look that way, it’s the shade of brown Joe’s eyes are that lends that hint, that touch, of red to his eyes. Ryan has always thought them peculiar, regardless. Peculiar and wickedly beautiful because in bright sunlight that darkness lights up and almost seems to glow.

Joe’s watching him now with whisper-sharp eyes blackened to obsidian as they all gasp and bleed. He’s staring at Ryan and Ryan is staring right back. They’re both listening to Sarah gasp and cry, seeking breath through her pain as she clings to life. He wants to help her, but he’s getting sleepy, the world darkening even more at the edges of his vision and Joe’s watching him. Joe is going to be the last thing he ever sees in this world and he wants to scream with that knowledge. He doesn’t want to think about why his hand is twitching on the floor, fingers trying to find the energy to reach _for_ Joe, for the period at the end of their sentence.

Joe smiles and moans softly in pain and Ryan swears he thinks he sees his hand moving as well. Joe probably finds this all incredibly romantic, the sick fuck. They’re too far away and too weak to move, regardless of what Joe’s fanciful notions may be. Ryan wants to tell Joe that just like he wants to tell him he hopes he dies in agony. He wants to tell him, _I hate you._ He wants to confess, _I love you and I hate_ myself _for it._

The blackness swells around him like the breaking notes of an aria though and Ryan’s eyes close as he falls down into it. It’s numb and empty there, but somewhere in the darkness he thinks he hears Joe calling his name. He wants to smile, but he has no mouth, no face. He is going down to die. He wonders idly who won this game of theirs, but he can’t make himself think further than that to find the answer.

In the darkness, the sound of Joe still calling his name is a faint, pain-strained sound. Ryan tunes him out, spreads his arms wide like wings and lets out one last breath as he falls into the chasm where a deeper darkness lays.

No, that’s not how the story goes. That’s just how he thought it was _going_ to go. He’s here in the present, alive and unwell and always waiting for… something. Ryan comes out of his drunken daze with a gasp and shakes his head to dispel the memories. It’s strange how when he thinks of being near death that it’s always Joe’s knife in his heart that he conjures up.

He sips from his Big Gulp cup of vodka soaked Sprite and blinks at the shadows of the park he’s sitting in. It’s late, well past the witching hour—those warty ladies have certainly retired for their rest by now. He’s been here for… he’s not sure how long. It was still early and people were out walking around when he ventured out and sat on this bench. Happy couples holding hands and annoying him with their gross public displays of affection. There’s a line between caring for the person you’re with and being a damned exhibitionist about it. It’s desperate and kind of pathetic to Ryan. That wasn’t always the case, but needless to say, he thinks he’s grown bitterly cynical over the years. Wonder at that.

With a snort of laughter, Ryan leans back against the bench and lets the chill of the metal soak through his black t-shirt. He’s hot even though the temperature is mild this time of year, but liquor burns his blood and he’s been drinking for hours. There’s a bottle of vodka in the messenger bag sitting beside him with a two liter Sprite to compliment it. His ice is long gone, so he’s sipping on lukewarm booze and sweet soda. He hasn’t eaten in—he thinks—two days, but maybe it’s three, although that doesn’t sound right. It’s hard to keep track of time when he’s on a bender like this though. Soon he’ll get sick, he knows this from experience, but for right now he’s okay and so, he sallies forth looking for a blackout.

He’s been coming to the park the last month or so, looking for something. Ryan knows what it is, but he’s not quite reached the level where he can consciously admit it to himself. After everything that happened, Joe and then Claire and finally, blessedly, Molly, he’s been up to a secret sort of something. It started years ago and came to a head with Molly and waking up in the hospital with another hole cut in his body by a psycho.

The look on Molly’s face had been hilarious later though because oh… she hadn’t expected him to get up. She hadn’t expected him to have the strength to take the knife away from her. She had been downright shocked (and furious) for a split second when he gutted her and left her blood and organs spilling onto the floor in a wet, stinking rush. He was too late to save Claire though, he always was and that’s the pisser.

He lost Claire. He lost Joe. He lost, in a word, everything that meant anything except for Jenny. Mike is a good guy, a good friend, but even though he’s harder now, he still lacks the sharp edges Ryan really seems to need. Claire had those sharp edges, although hers were more like thorns where Joe’s… Joe’s had been the shining edge of a well-honed straight razor. Joe had cut to the bone with every kiss, every caress, every gasping moan that had rang in his ears for days afterward. Ryan had loved him for it because Joe had been so right: they were alike, even though—Ryan laughs at the thought, almost doesn’t finish it, but decides, _What the hell?_

He murmurs the rest of it into the soft night breeze, “Polite society tends to frown on that kind of deviant behavior.”

Saying it out loud strikes him as hilarious and he doubles over himself and laughs until he’s short of breath. Mirthful tears streak his cheeks when he finally sits back up, still coughing out soft bursts of dying laughter. He’s got a vicious worm eating at his brain and a hollow place in his soul where a cold wind blows. They’ve been there for as long as he can remember. He has nothing left to lose and he’s been wanting to feed that hunger more than he has since he was a kid. Self-control had been hard won, but he’d mastered it. He’d almost been _good_. Joe pulled the patch off that place though and fed it, nurtured it, watched it grow with a scientist’s appreciation and a lover’s attentiveness. Joe knew what he was doing and he knew what Ryan was—what Ryan _is_. He told Ryan, didn’t he? _It was all for him_. All for him. All for. Him.

Tonight is not the night though and he knows that now. He’s been here for hours, patient as the predator he is deep down in his nasty soul, but it’s not happening. So, it’s home with him where he can still see Claire lying on the floor as she shuddered and twitched her last. It’s not something he wants to think about. No. _Nope_. Molly, well, there is a kind of enjoyment there. Partly it’s vindication— _gotcha, you bitch_ —and partly it’s pure sadistic delight. Ryan sighs and blinks as he scans the dark edges of the park one last time before he gets up to stagger on towards where there’s at least ice for his fucking drink.

About halfway home he becomes aware of soft footsteps behind him. He doesn’t know how long whoever it is has been following him. He’s too focused on putting one foot in front of the other to pay much attention. He doesn’t turn around to look at the person though because he doesn’t much care about his early morning walking companion. It could be a baker on their way in to start the ovens. For all he knows or cares, it could be the ghost of Jack the Ripper risen from his unknown grave across the Atlantic for the sole purpose of coming to slaughter Ryan like a whore. Maybe it’s a strung out junkie punk who will ask for his wallet and upon Ryan’s refusal—because no—they will shank him with some rusty, pointy weapon. Ryan may even thank them for the favor.

He’s been pondering his own insidious hungers of late, but the other side is that he’s been considering taking himself out of the equation. Does he really want to go down the same crooked path Joe went down (he does, but no, he doesn’t either)? Or should he nip it in the bud before it gets out of hand and he crosses a line he can’t step back over (that line has already been crossed, yes, yes it has, but he can choose not to do it _again_ )? Ryan is infatuated with death and has been since well before he watched his father bleed out on a convenience store floor. It haunts him, it coddles him, it slips into bed beside him and echoes like the soft scratch of a pen nib across his shoulders.

The idea of letting the precious fangs of death drag him down into the blackness he knew once before is a soothing thought. He may well get around to doing it himself, doing something that says, _Fuck you all very much and goodnight!_ all at once. No bullet or pills for Ryan Hardy, no sir, he doesn’t think so. He thinks maybe he’ll cut his own throat or disembowel himself or take a page out of the late, great Elliot Smith’s book and simply stab himself to death. There’s a certain note of determination in that method, Ryan thinks. It says, _I mean to do this and leave a mess in the process_. He likes that. He doesn’t think he will leave a note.

He comes to a swaying stop half a block from his apartment when he thinks he hears someone say his name. He listens again and hears nothing other than the noises of the city all around him, familiar as the voice of an old friend. The footsteps are gone now, too and he turns around at last to take a look at the emptiness behind him. There is a silhouette in that emptiness, tall and cloaked in shadows—very mysterious, he thinks, with a crooked smirk. There’s another smaller and more indistinct silhouette on the other side of the street near the corner. It’s barely visible to Ryan’s bleary eyes, not much more than a smudge against the grey-black of fading night where it shelters beneath the awning of a shop.

“Ryan,” his name is spoken again, louder and this time he hears it for sure. This time he _recognizes_ that voice. It’s rusty now—scorched, maybe, but he knows it all the same. It sends a thrill up his spine and leaves a ball of ice in his stomach.

He doesn’t say anything as the silhouette moves closer, becomes clearer in resolution. He’s wearing a hat, a derby bowler tipped low over his face, but Ryan’s already picturing the rosewood eyes hidden beneath the brim of it. There’ve been strange late night phone calls the past couple of weeks, nothing but air and the soft sound of breathing on the other end of the line. They come once, twice, sometimes three times a night and then other times, they don’t come at all. Ryan’s a night person by nature, so he’s almost always up and drinking when they come in.

Last night he whispered something into all of the humming air and gentle breath. He said, “Joe?” There was a pathetic touch of hope that cracked in his voice when he did it. He’d thrown the phone across the room in disgust when he heard the click of the disconnection on the other end. He’d been pissed the rest of the night, right up until he’d passed out on his bathroom floor near the toilet in case he had to throw up.

He says it again now, but there’s nothing pathetic there this time. Tonight it’s all hollow disbelief. “Joe?”

“Yes,” Joe says as he tips his hat back so Ryan can at last—God, at last, it’s been so long and it was making him sick and he doesn’t (he does) know why. Joe’s face is still as handsome as ever except for a scar like a smear on his chin that crawls up and over from the left side of his neck. It’s a burn scar. Ryan has no idea how many others there are beneath his clothes.

“Stay away from me,” Ryan says. It’s automatic to say that.

It’s also a lie and Joe knows it. He keeps walking, drawing closer and finally comes to a stop no more than a foot away.

“Hello,” Joe says. He smiles at Ryan and the ice in his stomach swells and plummets with his gut all the way to his feet.

He can’t speak, can only shake his head. “You’re dead.”

“Nope, I’m afraid not,” Joe says. “You knocked out three of my teeth though. I suppose that was rather helpful of you in the long run, however, so I decided to forgive you.”

“Thanks,” Ryan slurs. Even drunk, his voice is dust dry and sarcastic.

“Welcome,” Joe says as he tilts his head to the side to watch Ryan. “You know, there’s quite a lot of freedom in being deceased. I find I rather like being dead.”

“Shit,” Ryan says as he backs away a step. He can’t believe he’s doing this (yes, he can). He glances around Joe to the other silhouette down the way. “Emma?” he asks as he inclines his heavy head.

Joe nods and then says, “I need you to tell me something, Ryan.” He steps closer, crowding him as he speaks and Ryan refuses to give an inch. He breathes in the smell of Joe, same as it’s always been and almost shudders. He’s missed that smell so much. The last time he’d seen Joe, he’d stunk of adrenaline sweat, booze and old blood. 

Ryan still at least _thinks_ he should move, Joe’s dangerous. Ryan is not afraid of him though and he never has been. Besides, he does not want to move. He is insane. He knows that now. Has known it. His thoughts are fractured, broken sentences that don’t go anywhere and yet lead to the same conclusion.

“What’s that?” Ryan croaks.

“Are you still bored with me?” Joe asks, leaning closer to whisper it in Ryan’s ear.

Ryan swallows and shakes his head. Does he dare answer? Is there any reason anymore _not_ to answer?

“No,” Ryan says. He swallows again then repeats himself. “No, Joe.”

“Good,” Joe murmurs. “I’ve missed you _so much_ , it would’ve been awful to come all this way only to be rejected _again_.”

“Shut up,” Ryan says. He doesn’t want to hear this. He can apparently admit his heart’s dirtiest want, but he still doesn’t want to share his _feelings_ right here on the sidewalk with Joe—Joe’s ghost—Joe’s shade. Joe. Joe. Joe. Always Joe.

The feather in the band of Joe’s hat is from a cardinal and Ryan stares at it. It shines like a beacon in this grey pre-dawn stillness.

“As you wish,” Joe murmurs with a little smile at his film reference.

“I wish,” Ryan says as he grabs Joe and pulls him close. Deep down, Ryan always knew it would come to this if Joe had by some miracle survived. He’s tired of pretending ignorance in this matter.

Joe makes a low sound of pleasure and triumph—Ryan isn’t ignorant to that at all—in his throat as he runs his hands up Ryan’s back. Ryan sways into him and lets the chains fall away as he kisses his love risen from the grave to lead him into the shadows. That thought is very _Poe_ tic, Ryan thinks. He laughs into Joe’s mouth at his ridiculous pun and even more absurd analogy. He tightens his fingers against Joe’s shoulders and holds on as he lets go of everything else. He should be ashamed that he has never been able to completely stop loving his downfall. For years he was, but he lets that go, too, finally and completely.

Ryan pulls out of the kiss to catch his breath and nuzzles Joe’s cheek once before cutting his eyes up to glance at the sky. The dawn is at last blooming across the city like the sleepy red petals of an unfurling iris.

Everything comes back to red with Joe in Ryan’s mind and this is no different. Red is the color of blood, rage, hatred, sex, passion and _love_. Despicable, heartbroken love that has eaten away at his soul like a slow drug until it has poisoned his very core and left him swaying on a New York sidewalk looking into eyes he’s been dreaming about for far too long.

Ryan huffs out a breath then rests his head on Joe’s shoulder like a tired old hound dog. He thinks he can rest now. When Joe wraps his arms around him, Ryan smiles against the soft cotton of Joe’s ever-ridiculous cardigan and closes his eyes.

May the lord help his poor soul, for he is damned and he does not care.

****

The End


End file.
